


A Navajo Lullaby

by unfroyharper



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Babies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfroyharper/pseuds/unfroyharper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a new, single father is hard. Especially when you're a superhero. Warning: Ambiguous timelines ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Navajo Lullaby

Roy should have known that the hard part wouldn’t be getting Lian from Jade. On some level, he _should_ have known that the fights and the poisoning and the hospital were just the beginning, the icing on the cake of hardship that was his life. If he needed help hunting down a baddie at three in the morning, it was as simple as calling any of the countless heroes he knew until someone was both awake and able to help.

If he needed help because it was three in the morning, the baby wouldn’t stop crying and he just wanted to get some sleep before he started hallucinating, who was he supposed to call? Would Nightwing come and rock his baby until she finally slept and Roy collapsed in a sleep-coma on the floor?

No.

Hell, he’d never even _held_ a baby until Lian and he was supposed to be a dad? To somehow magically know how to prepare a bottle and change a diaper and buy all the things she’d need?

Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. Not his life on the reservation, certainly not living with Ollie, not his training with the DEA or the CBI... nothing. It turned out nothing could be more different than weapons and babies, no matter what pet names Roy gave his guns.

Not knowing what else to do, he cradled Lian against his side and bounced her softly, pressing the first speed-dial number on his phone—Dinah. Roy felt less guilty about it when she answered the phone clearly wide-awake. At the sound of her calm, rational voice, Roy lost it. “She won’t stop crying, Dinah! I don’t know what to do, I’ve done everything I can think of and I can’t even remember the last time I’ve slept, I think I’m going _crazy_.”

There was a long pause.

“Have you tried burping her?” Dinah slowly suggested, clearly trying to hide how clueless she was too. Roy lost all hope of getting any sleep that night.

“Yeah, no dice. And before you ask, I’ve tried feeding her, changed her _twice_ , gave her a pacifier—” He groaned. Holding the phone between his ear and shoulder, he used his newly-freed hand to massage his temples, trying to stave off his growing headache. “Dinah, can you please just—I don’t know what to _do_ , I—”

He felt more than heard her sigh, even over the phone. “I’ll be over in about an hour. Think you can hold on that long, tiger?”

“I hope so. See ya soon.” She hung up and Roy dropped the phone on the floor, lying down on the couch and moving Lian so that she rested on his chest. He lightly placed his hand on top of Lian’s tiny body to keep her from rolling off. She finally started to quiet down then, and he felt a slightly-hysterical laugh bubble up in his throat but cut it off before it could disturb her. He’d spent so much time rocking her, bouncing her, pacing back and forth and moving around that it hadn’t even occurred to him to simply try lying still.

As she quieted down, Roy softly sang a Navajo lullaby. _“The earth is your mother, she holds you. The sky is your father, he protects you. Sleep, sleep. The rainbow is your sister, she loves you. The winds are your brothers, they sing to you. Sleep, sleep. We are together always. We are together always. There never was a time when this was not so. Sleep, sleep.”_

By the time Dinah arrived, having snuck in using the spare key taped to the bottom of the door mat, they were both asleep. Laughing quietly to herself, she took the blanket off of Roy’s bed, draped it over the two of them and left.

**Author's Note:**

> The lullaby Roy sings is NOT mine. It is the poem "Navajo Lullaby" by Leslie Marmon Silko.


End file.
